Frank Thiel

Frank Thiel is a contemporary German photographer whose large-scale color images documenting the shifting social and political landscape of post-wall Berlin. Over the course of his entire career, Thiel has closely photographed architecture of Berlin to underline its history and symbolic importance. His work seeks to highlight the emergence of new patterns in urban existence, as well as address topics of state surveillance and the privatization of public space. Over time, his practice has expanded to other landscapes and environments, notably including his photographs of the massive glaciers of Patagonia, shown in the exhibition Nowhere Is A Place at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. “It’s not that I have a new intention or idea for every single image,” he has explained. “These 20 years of work are like a process, almost organic for me, like the branching of a tree. If you put a timeline on the works you could see that almost everything refers to everything, that I go back and forth all the time, that I intensify certain elements and others I don’t follow anymore (at least for a certain time).” Born in Kleinmachnow, Germany in 1966, he received his formal education at a training college for photography in Berlin. Thiel lives and works in Berlin, Germany.